Eladaria (Creed)

People Like to Bitch, but I think Kering's Creeds are Sexy!

In 2019, Banana Republic released Peony & Peppercorn, a fragrance I own and still enjoy wearing occasionally. It is restrained with respect to peppercorn, instead foregrounding a bright, soapy, pink peony accord. While it does not read as conventionally masculine, I have never found it uncomfortable to wear. The fragrance was composed by former VP of Takasago,Vincent Kuczinski.

Last year, Creed introduced Eladaria, describing it as a “morning rose” built around dewy accords and cool textures. Having finally spent time with it, what immediately stands out is its striking similarity to Peony & Peppercorn. This is eyebrow-raising, particularly given that Carmina previously exhibited subtle parallels to Banana Republic’s Dark Cherry & Amber. In effect, Eladaria smells like a partial convergence of those two Banana Republic fragrances. Its rose accord appears to rely on the same structural framework used in Carmina, while its peony is rendered with the same bright, sudsy clarity found in Peony & Peppercorn. The difference is one of emphasis: in Eladaria, peony ultimately dominates, whereas rose jam with hints of lavender and orange zest leads in Carmina.

The handling of pepper distinguishes the two peony-forward compositions. In Peony & Peppercorn, Kuczinski’s formula barely acknowledges the peppercorn note, allowing peony to carry the fragrance from opening through drydown. Eladaria also privileges peony, but its pink peppercorns remain a consistent and defining textural element from the first spray through the base. Banana Republic’s fragrances are licensed by Maesa, and to my knowledge there is no formal relationship between Maesa and Creed. That said, one cannot help but wonder whether Vincent Kuczinski himself is the perfumer, or at least a main collaborator behind Eladaria.

If that were the case, it would explain a great deal. This particular Creed reads as a luxury refinement of Peony & Peppercorn, though it does not meaningfully extend the original concept. Instead, it remains faithful to the same pepper-and-floral architecture. I detect aldehydes and pink pepper at the top, followed by a faintly ambery sweetness—likely ethyl maltol used in a non-gourmand capacity—before an intensely soapy, citrus-free transition into a linear peony accord, anchored by the same firm rose structure present in Carmina, except here the rose is far lighter. Eladaria is a peony scent.

There is no question that Eladaria is beautiful, and it fully earns its name. Still, it is difficult to ignore the oddity of Creed seemingly mining the Banana Republic mod bank. Dark Cherry & Amber likely contained several viable formula iterations that went unused until Creed’s attention yielded Carmina (although I still think it's closer to Love in Black). Now Eladaria presents itself as an unmistakably close modification of Peony & Peppercorn. The addition of Ambroxan lends salinity and depth, reinforcing the familiar musk and cashmere wood base, but beyond that, the two compositions are uncomfortably close, frankly much closer than Carmina is to Dark Cherry & Amber.

Kuczinski has been VP and Senior Perfumer at MANE since 2011, and MANE perfumer Mathieu Nardin composed Delphinus (which I have yet to review), so there is proof that Creed has collaborated with Kuczinski's firm in recent years. I'll go out on a limb here and say that given this connection, it's likely that Kuczinski was in touch with Creed during Eladaria's development, and perhaps a notebook formula of his 2019 creation was purchased and Creed-ified into the scent. 

I would happily buy and wear Eladaria, but that is more a confession than a recommendation. More rational consumers might look at the price tag for this Creed, compare its scent to Peony & Peppercorn, buy the $20 fragrance instead, and live the based life. I say more power to them. 

Revisiting Calvin Klein's Obsession for Men

I recently purchased a new 120 ml bottle of Obsession for Men for twenty dollars and felt compelled to revisit this still formidable oriental relic of the 1980s. Even now, four decades after its debut, Obsession for Men remains the flagship masculine fragrance of the Calvin Klein portfolio. What strikes me most upon smelling it again is not merely its persistence, but its undiminished beauty. After a fallow period in the 2000s and early 2010s, when the scent seemed attenuated and somewhat coarse, my nose finds the current formulation restored and once again worthy of its reputation. Small mercies, indeed.

I recently watched a video review by Eau d’Erica that I found unintentionally revealing. Born at the tail end of the 1990s, she has no lived relationship to the cultural moment from which Obsession for Men emerged. Her initial reaction is ambivalent. She notes, correctly, that the fragrance is more animalic than expected, but quickly pivots to describing it as smelling like an “old man,” invoking nursing homes and decline. The response is understandable, if ultimately misguided. Obsession for Men is not a neutral or contemporary composition. It demands a certain temporal literacy. At minimum, one needs to be in their late thirties or forties to grasp that this fragrance is not simply “from the 1980s,” but is suburban America in the 1980s, rendered liquid and sealed in glass.

From the moment its citrus-spice opening meets skin, Obsession announces itself as an emissary from another era. There are no smartphones or ride-sharing apps where it comes from. Nights glow with neon. Streets hum with conversation rather than notification tones. Cigarette smoke hangs in the air, omnipresent and unquestioned. Women wear dresses and heels; men wear sport coats and slick their hair back. Synthesizers sound futuristic rather than dated. Movies are events, not content. You do not attend them casually; you experience them. Everything feels alive, in part because attention has not yet been fractured by devices and the constant undertow of the internet.

And everywhere, the air smells faintly of Obsession for Men. From 1987 onward, when the fragrance reached critical mass among American men, it seemed to permeate daily life. You encountered it in cars, in homes, in classrooms, on sidewalks. It was an experience in itself, the Sauvage of its day, only denser, louder, and more unapologetic. The advertising campaigns of the late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly the now-iconic imagery featuring Kate Moss, sustained its prominence for years. Not since Drakkar Noir had a fragrance so cleanly and powerfully signified its era, an era that understood itself as irreducibly cool.

My father always kept a bottle on his dresser. He wore it often enough to matter, but not so often that he finished it. That bottle lingered for decades, gradually becoming more and more vintage, until one day he inexplicably discarded it. There was perhaps thirty milliliters left, the liquid darkened and sedimented, the splash top crusted with resinous residue. It was, by any modern standard, gnarly. And it smelled that way too: a funky, civet-heavy oriental that defied convention by grafting itself onto a fougère skeleton, layering smoky lavender over balsamic resins and woods. It was not polite. It did not attempt to be.

To call Obsession for Men nostalgic is accurate, but insufficient. I cannot pretend to evaluate it objectively. Yes, I think it smells wonderful, but when I inhale it, I am flooded with place and time. Dark kitchens. Earth-toned interiors. The lingering aesthetic of the 1970s. Big hair, broad shoulders, boxy cars with expansive windows. My parents visiting friends, their homes saturated with distinctive domestic odors, and threaded through all of it, Obsession for Men. The black-and-white, artfully severe commercials of the era aimed for timelessness even as they became inextricably bound to their moment.

Calvin Klein’s subsequent fragrances have largely been exercises in abstraction and synthetic minimalism. CK One, the 1990s counterpoint to Obsession, deserves equal respect. Most of what followed, however, feels like a meditation on elevated cheapness: competent, vaguely interesting, chemically fresh, and durable enough to persist on shelves without inspiring devotion. Obsession stands apart. The difference is immediate. The materials feel richer, more vibrant. The blending is more assured. Bob Slattery’s original conception, a reworking of the feminine fragrance infused with a heavy dose of lavender soapiness and animalic bite, may be lost to history, but the stewardship of subsequent reformulations has been surprisingly faithful. When I smell it closely, each constituent note asserts itself with clarity, and the whole feels alive. Wonderful stuff. 

It is evident that Calvin Klein still takes pride in this fragrance, and the current version is excellent. One final point deserves mention: Obsession for Men ages exceptionally well. It can be worn freely, given its modest price (it was far more expensive back in the day), but if used sparingly and left to rest, the liquid darkens and the composition grows smoother and more resonant over time. Oxidation performs a quiet alchemy here. I am struck by how good the present formulation already is, and I plan to keep one bottle in regular rotation while allowing another to mature undisturbed. When I return to it years from now, it will function as a genuine time capsule: musky, resinous, and deeply familiar, the scent of a vanished world and of my own childhood suspended in amber.

Aoud Violet (Mancera)

Aoud Violet, released in 2014, shows that if you want florals from Mancera/Montale, rose is the way to go. It's not that the brand can't do other florals, as this is certainly a decent violet fragrance with plenty in its corner. It's just that Pierre Montale knows his way around the harmonization of natural and synthetic rose materials, while the 100% synthetic violet in this fragrance poses a challenge he doesn't seem entirely willing to embrace. 

It resides in a territory that has been covered, often more dynamically, by less expensive fragrances. Fahrenheit, Grey Flannel, and Creed’s Love in Black (which is ironically cheaper at grey market prices than Aoud Violet is at retail) all explore similar approaches to the peppery greenness and purple sweetness of violet materials, and do so with more personality. Mancera’s version opens green and brisk, with galbanum, bergamot, and a polished aldehydic lift that signals quality—and considerable value—at its roughly $70 grey-market price point. That quickly gives way to a plush violet accord that’s lightly petrol-tinged but mostly dry-powdery and semisweet. From there, it settles into violet wrapped in Galaxolide and other clean musks. By the four-hour mark, those musks take over, and the scent remains largely unchanged for the next ten hours, a steady impression of purpley-grey violets at the laundromat. Longevity and projection are admirable here.

There are hints of spice, but they register more as violet leaf piquancy than as distinct notes. The violet leaf itself never takes center stage, instead hovering in the background with a watery, cucumber-like effect from materials such as nonadienal and methyl octyn carbonate. This likely explains why some reviewers call Aoud Violet aquatic, even though it isn’t. In the end, I enjoy wearing it because it’s smooth and inoffensive, but I also find it the most vanilla violet I own. This is an olfactory theme that benefits from risk. Fahrenheit succeeds because it commits to how subversive and dark its subject matter can get. Love in Black is unapologetically maudlin. Grey Flannel glowers. Aoud Violet plays it safe, and the comfort it offers doesn’t quite make up for the boredom it leaves behind.

Side note: "Aoud" Violet contains zero oud. 

Amber & Roses (Mancera)

An absolute masterpiece.

This 2014 release is often described as a dark, vampiric, and overtly Goth take on roses. Given the name "Mancera," which sounds like it should be for a Scandinavian death-metal band in 1993, I was ready for something overwrought. Instead, I found myself wearing a beautifully made Damask rose fragrance not far from Creed’s Fleur de Thé Rose Bulgare (2000), and that surprised me more than anything else.

The surprise is partly about the brand. Mancera, Montale’s Western-facing sibling, wasn’t where I expected this level of refinement. Montale does plenty well, but often with obvious synthetics, designer-ish structures, and a taste for excess, so I assumed Amber & Roses would follow suit. It doesn’t—it's a few cuts above my two Montales.

When a perfume is this good, I prefer to keep the descriptions simple. Amber & Roses opens with a wan green geranium leaf accord, bitter, oddly isolated, and accompanied only by a faint suggestion of lemon. For the first ten minutes it feels almost like a misfire. The geranium smells natural enough, but its peppery bite has been sanded down to something muted and indistinct, as if it's being perceived from a great distance.

Then the veil lifts, and a remarkable rose blooms. It’s not a once-in-a-generation rose, but it smells like a master perfumer was given a generous budget and plenty of time: a clear, composed bouquet of Turkish roses. You can sense both naturals and high-quality synthetics at work, with rose absolute reinforced by a late 1980s headspace-style rose reconstruction, and it's lucid, naturally sweet, only bordering on jammy, without tipping too far over the edge. Nothing novel, but beautifully executed.

The tiny green sliver of geranium stays present amidst the bouquet, joined by cool dosings of Ambroxan and a silvery incense note, judiciously (read: slyly) used to bolster the rose, not steal its thunder. The Ambroxan is the same type used in Armaf’s Club de Nuit line—it’s not Cetalox or Ambrofix—but Mancera's choice feels right here. Basic Ambroxan’s twangy, faintly metallic edge works perfectly with the incense and with rose’s own bitter-metallic facet. Everything is balanced, cleanly dosed, and refreshingly simple.

It makes me think of Fleur de Thé Rose Bulgare because that was another Turkish Rose with a light sprig of green-woodiness that eventually (after around ten hours) dried down to a balls-to-the-wall ambergris base. Creed used at least 25% real ambergris tincture in the 2000s, with Ambroxan as a boosting agent, but even they're not using the real stuff anymore, so Mancera's all-synth "amber" is perfectly fine, even if they're not using the more expensive proprietary oil house materials. 

What matters is how it flows, and as with Fleur de Thé Rose Bulgare, Amber & Roses moves like a simple and direct rose/ambergris fragrance, with a touch of green-woodiness, a faint geranium instead of Creed's meek green tea note, and an extremely light incense adding just a touch of extra dimension that even the Creed lacked. Given a choice between the older fragrance's big Moby Dick energy ambergris (the stuff was pretty raw and smelled like salty pennies submerged under wet seaweed that's been beached under the sun for seventeen hours) and Mancera's piously wispy incense with an even more subliminal microdrop of myrrh, I actually prefer Pierre Montale's take.

I’d like to note a YouTube review by Marc Robitaille, where he spent several minutes sniffing, grimacing, and downvoting this stuff. Yes, he looks sincere. But Marc is far too perceptive to genuinely think this smells bad. I suspect he's gatekeeping in an effort to prevent grey market supply from drying up, and honestly, I can respect that with this fragrance. It really is that good. If I were smarter, I’d do the same.

So no, don’t buy Amber & Roses. It’s disgusting. Easily the worst thing Mancera makes. Best to stay far away.

Tyrannosaurus Rex (Zoologist)

Antonio Gardoni is clearly a genius, as evidenced by his work for his own range, but good lord is T-Rex a bad fragrance. It opens smelling like Icy Hot muscle rub, and keeps smelling camphorous and chemical forever. What gives?

I can suss out the florals—rose, ylang, champaca, jasmine—but they're compressed into a fairly useless framing of harsh resinous materials that scream over the bouquet and destroy my sinuses. The muscle rub association never lets up, and frankly that stuff smells better. Strong whiffs of skanky incense and synthetic civet in the base do little to help matters, and while I can appreciate the tight blending, the end result is crappy. 

Life is too short to wear these kinds of perfumes. I get it, the perfumer and the brand he works for are trying to break new ground with a daring scent that is truly "niche," and on that count, they succeed. But the goal of wearing a perfume, any perfume, is to smell good. I don't need to spend hundreds of dollars to smell like dirty muscle balm. 

No thanks. Next . . . 

New Year's Day Memo Paris Double Review: Madurai and Irish Leather

Released in 2022, Madurai is one of sixteen fragrances in Memo’s Fleurs Bohèmes collection. That name gives me pause. Having once lived in Bohemia, I can safely say it isn’t especially known for its flowers. Still, Clara and John Molloy’s brand has assembled a full bouquet under this banner, so let's take a closer look at Madurai.

The idea behind the scent is a streetside merchant’s stall in India. White flowers, peach, turmeric, sandalwood, marigold, and a handful of woody-green notes form the palette, and the opening hits with bright peach and marigold, juicy and green-spicy, hooking me immediately. I've come to recognize marigold (tagetes) as a great "green" note, as it also features prominently in Givenchy's Greenergy, there as a lush spiced grassiness, and here as a more delicate vegetal nuance. 

Then Madurai's striking jasmine accord unfurls like a white flag over a dewy field of greens. Turmeric is clearly present and surprisingly realistic, its fresh, ginger-adjacent bite acting as a bridge between the delicate florals and a soft, restrained Australian sandalwood in the base. The overall effect is clean and airy, yet grounded, thanks to a barely-there sugary tuberose that props up the wispy jasmine accord in the heart.

There’s nothing indolic or challenging about the jasmine here. If you’re jasmine-averse, or wish you liked it but struggle to find something restrained enough to wear comfortably, Madurai is worth a try. It’s office-safe, but far from dull, and the composition is nuanced and well balanced. Several jasmine materials are at work, with synthetics like methyl dihydrojasmonate boosting the dewy freshness alongside jasmine absolute, which I detect in far greater measure than sambac. The persistent peach up top and the texturally creamy sandalwood beneath add acidity and woodiness, keeping the florals from flattening.

No haute niche perfume review is complete without mentioning price. At the time of writing, a 75 ml bottle of Madurai costs $340, or $170 per ounce, which is also the price of the 30 ml size. Is it worth it? If you can afford it, I’d say yes. The high quality of its materials is undeniable, and Gaël Montero’s blending gives the fragrance a distinctively luxurious character. This perfume doesn't come across as complex and challenging, but instead feels like your Basic Girl sneaker juice jasmine soliflore from 2006 was given a major upgrade. It may be the most signature-worthy jasmine I’ve ever smelled.

Here's a fragrance that I like even more than Madurai, yet simply don't understand. Aliénor Massenet  named her 2013 composition "Irish Leather" and then proceeded to give the world a South American yerba maté tea scent. This baffles me, because Ireland is best known for its strong black Assam Irish Breakfast tea, which couldn’t be more different and, with cream and sugar, is far richer and cozier than any herbal concoction.

It would be one thing if the maté note were a minor background thing, but it's the core focus for no fewer than nine hours of wear, making Irish Leather a dank tisane (not leather) scent. Furthermore, it smells really, really good, like a fresh, tannic, and beautifully leafy green tea. The fragrance intros with a brief and very realistic juniper berry accord, fresh and slightly citric, which then segues into this smoky maté for twelve solid hours. 

Irish Leather's base is fairly simple, an unadorned vetiver, but by the seven hour mark, I don't care. Irish Leather has won me over. With that said, someday a perfume house will correctly identify what makes for an Irish smell. Having spent two years in Northwestern Ireland, I can tell you what it really smells like: salty sea air and cow shit. I don't expect anyone to go for that, of course, but if you're aiming to capture the essence of a Northern European country, maybe don't use a prominent South American material, especially when the European equivalent smells even better. I mean, I sort of get it—Postmodernism, cultural appropriation, yadda yadda—but come on. Opportunity missed. 

Production Hell: GoDaddy's Blogging Features (Or Lack Thereof) Delay FromPyrgos.com Rollout Date

My goal was to have my “.com” ready by January 2026.

That’s not happening.

Technically, the site is already live. If you want to visit today and read reviews, you can. But most of the content isn’t ready for prime time, and the official rollout is now pushed well into next year. Realistically, I don’t expect the site to be fully finished until summer 2026 at the earliest.

The reason is simple: GoDaddy’s blogging tools are bad. I knew they weren’t great when I signed up, but I didn’t realize just how bad until I was deep into the process. Coding a blog post correctly takes far more time than it should, especially when it comes to making everything work on mobile. And mobile is the real problem.

By default, the site places post categories at the top of the page. On mobile, clicking a category doesn’t take you to the content you selected. It just highlights the category, and you have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to see that anything even happened. It’s unintuitive and frustrating.

To work around this, I created an archive that organizes content by alphabetical range. That’s been a lot of work, since each post has to be manually re-categorized. And I haven’t even finished transferring all the content yet. I also built a “reviews by brand” section, with separate pages for each brand, so readers aren’t forced to hunt for content after clicking on it. Again, more work.

The upside is that GoDaddy allows for a cleaner, more professional-looking layout than anything Blogger offers. Visually, it’s a big step up.

You might be asking, “Bryan, if you knew it was this bad, why did you go with GoDaddy?” The answer is that my plan is long-term and two-tiered. I want From Pyrgos to continue for many years as a blog. But eventually, I also want to use the same site to sell my own fragrances. That’s where GoDaddy shines. Its retail tools are strong, and launching a store there will be much easier than on most other platforms. What I lose in blogging convenience, I gain in future marketing and sales potential. Having my own fragrance brand accessible to the public could help fund the blog itself.

So stay tuned. As work continues on FromPyrgos.com, I’ll keep publishing here on Blogger. When the new site is fully ready, this address will be retired, and visitors will be redirected to the new home. Until then, you can keep enjoying my content here.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Versace Versense (Versace)

Released in 2009, Versace’s feminine-marketed unisex Versense feels like a 1990s throwback that arrived a decade too late. I say this because Versense is a figgy floral that could easily be mistaken for any one of the dozens that perfumed the air in 1998 or 1999. Its appearance on shelves when it did is something of a curiosity, and I’m not convinced the category needed another entry.

It opens well enough, with a bitter, pithy bergamot and lime accord that smells reasonably natural and avoids the waxy citrus aldehydes that tend to push feminine fragrances toward drugstore territory. Many reviewers on Fragrantica wax poetic about the citrus, but I’m less persuaded. Yes, it smells good, but it's thin and somewhat weak. To my nose, it lacks dimension. From there, a lemongrass accord emerges, again faint and difficult to clearly discern. Eventually, vague white floral notes appear, lending a soft green sweetness. This is where the fragrance veers into unisex territory, as the notes that might've sent it firmly into the ladies department are incredibly restrained. And then comes the fig.

It’s a fig accord with discreet vetiver and oakmoss, or something standing in for it, and it’s here that Versense performs best. Fig is an agreeable, nostalgic note. Versace presents it plainly, without complicating the structure, a restraint appreciated. Still, Versense wears like an Italian-style eau de cologne built from mid-grade materials, where one might wish for refinement. Ennui in green, if you will. 

Fougères Marine (Montale)

The box arrives in marine blue, the bottle in Montale’s signature silver, but that’s the last you’ll hear from me about “presentation.” What matters is the scent, and online the chorus is deafening: Fougères Marine smells “just like Tommy,” only richer, smoother, longer lasting, and therefore—according to the internet’s most excitable NPCs—worthy of immediate purchase. I understand the impulse. I smell it too. Yet I can’t quite join the chant, because I was there. I wore Lauder’s vintage Tommy when the nineties were still happening, not yet a nostalgia industry. I loved that fragrance. And this is not that fragrance.

This is the brief for that fragrance—a parallel-world scenario in which Tommy Hilfiger’s team bypassed Lauder entirely and instead tried to slip Olivier Creed a suitcase of Euros to work his unofficial “Creed magic.” In this imaginary scenario, Olivier remembers he isn’t a perfumer and dutifully outsources the job to an S-tier ghost: someone with the skill and precision to construct Tommy’s bone structure using top-flight materials, and lace its freshness with dusky herbal aromatics, Calone 1951, and a massive synthetic ambergris accord (Cetalox, Precyclemone B) for that "marine" piece. The result behaves like the finest Creeds once did: rich yet airy, diffusive yet tingling in cold air, gliding forward with the self-assurance of a fragrance that lasts twenty hours on skin and nearly forever on fabric.

Wearing it, I’m reminded that formulas age even when nostalgia doesn’t. Today’s Tommy cologne still resembles its former self, though a juniper-seaside inflection has crept in, muting the gauzy sweetness of its youth with a hint of lavandin-fueled marine bitterness, as if quietly borrowing a page from Montale’s book. If you must compare Fougères Marine to Tommy, compare it to this reformulated Tommy, not the original one worn with striped crewnecks and Caesar cuts in 1995. Montale’s version is too complex, too polished, too gleamingly synthetic-ambergris aquatic to truly resurrect the spiced-apple style of the nineties, a genre unlikely ever to return.

What it does revive, however, is a rarer pleasure: the sense that a fragrance can be both supremely wearable and quietly spectacular. Tommy was always a good idea, but Montale perfected it. To quote the NPCS: "S-Tier." Even my fiancée likes this one, and she doesn't like anything.

A Drop d'Issey Essentielle Eau de Parfum (Issey Miyake)

I've not smelled the original Drop from 2021, although it looks like it'd be right up my alley—lilac, powdery notes, fresh musks? What's not to like?

The only reason I own the Essentielle flanker is an eBay seller offered a deal I couldn't refuse on a 100 ml bottle, so there you have it. All three of Miyake's Drops feature a prominent lilac note, my favorite floral in nature and perfume, so I figured I couldn't go wrong with any of them. Essentielle is beautiful and ethereal, with a lovely lilting lilac accord that permeates the entire structure, but I'm struck by one undeniable reality: it smells a helluva lot like the original Tommy Girl (Calice Becker, 1996).

It's like the perfumer took an unused Tommy Girl mod, swapped lilac in for green tea, and amped up the synthetic green magnolia accord. Smells great, albeit softer and a little better quality than its nineties progenitor.

Very Saturday-at-the-mall casual, but good stuff!

Old Spice "Long Lasting" Cologne (Shulton, 1980 - 1990 Vintage)

The 1980s ushered in my favorite period for Old Spice, perhaps from personal nostalgia. This was the decade when American Cyanamid opted to repurpose the brand image and moved the red logo lettering above the blue ship graphic. They slapped a blue and gold band around the box lettering and called it "Long Lasting Cologne" to drive the longevity and "powerhouse" inference home. This version of Old Spice saw a bit more cola-like brightness in the opening accord, and longevity is indeed pretty impressive, clocking in at no less than ten hours. Beautiful stuff.

Aside from that, there isn't a whole lot else to say about it. If you're familiar with the scent of Old Spice, here it is, yet again. My own view is perhaps unpopular, but I think the lettering above the ship looks sharper than prior iterations of these graphics. The visual balance is better. I also enjoy that Shulton kept the traditional red box with the larger ship graphic, and I even like that they put "long lasting" in front of "cologne" to make an unnecessary point about the cologne concentration, which is really an eau de toilette concentration. This stuff is strong. Old Spice is strong in general. Whoever it was that said it's "fleeting" clearly didn't know what he was talking about, because this fragrance is anything but. In vintage form it is practically eau de parfum strength. 

I believe this will be the last vintage era of the scent that I review, not because I've tired of it, but rather for lack of access to any other vintages. I've given you early 1950s through to the present. I've yet to see 1940s Old Spice on eBay or elsewhere. I imagine someone like Bill Gates or Elon Musk has a full bottle of it with zinc stopper #1 resting comfortably atop the Hull Pottery Company's bottle, but doubt that I'll ever have a chance to own one myself. Hope springs eternal, and I still keep an eye out. It's important to remember that these first issue bottles weren't made very well, and leakage was a big problem, which makes the likelihood of ever finding one that much slimmer. 

To sum it all up, Old Spice hasn't changed very much in its 87 years of existence. I slapped on the current (c. 2019) formula yesterday, and marveled at how similar to the vintages it smelled. The biggest difference occurred in the late 1960s, when the archival Shulton formula was forced to change due to increasing restrictions on nitro musks. The 1950s version smells much woodier, muskier, and sweeter than anything from the 1970s onward. I found the 1970s formula to be a touch muskier and more powdery. 

The 1980s formula has less musk but what feels to me like an extra dash of cinnamon and nutmeg. The 1990s P&G formula streamlines the scent's facets, and that version carries on virtually unchanged to the present, although I have yet to try 2020s Old Spice, so perhaps that will be a future review.